Fool Me Twice

By Alan Cook

By the time Carol Golden is asked to help an old friend of her in-laws who lives on the beach in Southern California, it appears that the damage has already been done in the form of a scam that has separated retired business professor Peter Griffenham from a sizeable chunk of money. All Carol can hope to do is help to find the culprits and, hopefully, get some of the money back. She is also saddled with a bouncing one-year-old boy who inhibits her activities. The chief suspect, a bewitching redheaded actress named Amy, has disappeared, and Peter is reluctant to go to the police because he’s afraid his son, David, will use his mental lapse as an excuse to attempt to gain control of his entire estate. Carol tries to separate herself from Peter’s problems after he refuses to take her advice, but events rapidly spiral out of control as it appears the con artists are after a much larger piece of his money. Carol keeps getting pulled back into the mess, trying to help Peter maintain his independence and at least some of his money, but the outcome will be far different than she has envisioned.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alan Cook
• Release date: Mar 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370520596

Alan Cook

After spending more than a quarter of a century as a pioneer in the computer industry, Alan Cook is well into his second career as a writer.EAST OF THE WALL--Charlie and Liz No. 2Charlie Ebersole and Liz Reid are recruited by the CIA to go into East Germany in June 1963, to attempt to obtain intelligence about a secret project of the Germans during World War II, about which information has been lost. The Berlin Wall and the Stasi (East German secret police) make this a perilous mission, but the two suspect that they are the most appropriate people for the job.TRUST ME IF YOU DARE--Charlie and Liz No. 1Charlie Ebersole is good at his job as a securities analyst for International Industries in Los Angeles in the year 1962, but he is also somewhat bored at being tied to a desk most of the time. He jumps at the chance to join the fraud section of II, and is immediately put on a case that will take him and another employee, Elizabeth Reid, to Buffalo, Fort Lauderdale, and possibly to Fidel Castro’s Cuba, although the Bay of Pigs fiasco is a recent memory, and relations between Cuba and the United States are not good. Charlie and Liz find out that uncovering a Ponzi scheme isn’t all just fun and games, but it can be dangerous too, especially when somebody is intent on them not discovering the truth. Before they are through they may wish they were back at their nice safe desks in Los Angeles.YOUR MOVE--CAROL GOLDEN NO. 7Carol looks for a serial killer who likes to play games. As she attempts to figure out the game and its significance for the killer she realizes that events occurring when she was a college student but are lost to her because of her amnesia may be significant in tracking down the killer. Does the killer want something from her? If so, what? This is becoming too personal for comfort.FOOL ME TWICE--CAROL GOLDEN NO. 6Carol Golden is asked to help Peter Griffenham recover a chunk of money he's lost in a scam, but he doesn't want to go to the police, and by the time she gets involved the prime suspect, a dazzling redhead named Amy, has disappeared along with the money. Or has she? Perhaps that was only the first chapter, to be followed by a much larger scam. Can Carol help prevent chapter two?GOOD TO THE LAST DEATH--CAROL GOLDEN NO. 5When Carol Golden's husband, Rigo, disappears, she not only has to look for him, but elude the FBI at the same time, because there is evidence that she was involved in his disappearance. She doggedly follows a faint trail, keeping her location a secret from everybody except her friend, Jennifer, a spy-in-training, who takes time off from her top-secret job to help Carol.HIT THAT BLOT--CAROL GOLDEN NO. 4The fourth Carol Golden novel takes Carol into the exciting and dangerous world of tournament backgammon. She listens to a caller who calls himself Danny on the crisis hotline Carol volunteers for say he is afraid he'll be murdered. A backgammon player, herself, Carol, disobeys the hotline rules and sets out to find and help Danny. She needs all her experience with spies and detective work to survive this adventure.DANGEROUS WIND--CAROL GOLDEN NO. 3In the third Carol Golden novel, Carol is abducted by a shady government group and required to help find an old boyfriend of hers she doesn't remember (because of her amnesia) who is trying to bring about the "downfall of the western world." She will travel to all seven continents before she can figure out what's going on.RELATIVELY DEAD--CAROL GOLDEN NO. 2Having recovered her identity (lost in FORGET TO REMEMBER) if not her memory, Carol Golden seeks out some of her cousins in the second Carol Golden novel, only to find out they appear to be targeted for murder. While trying to figure out what's going on, Carol encounters the Grandparent Scam and a Ponzi Scheme, and finds out that she may be one of the targets of the murderer.FORGET TO REMEMBER--CAROL GOLDEN NO. 1Carol Golden isn't her real name. She doesn't remember her real name or anything that happened before she was found, naked and unconscious, in a Dumpster on the beautiful Palos Verdes Peninsula in Southern California. After some initial medical assistance, government at all levels declares her a non-person. She can't work because she doesn't have a Social Security number, which she can't get because she doesn't have a birth certificate. She can't even legally drive a car or fly on an airplane. This is the first Carol Golden novel.Alan's Lillian Morgan mysteries, CATCH A FALLING KNIFE and THIRTEEN DIAMONDS, explore the secrets of retirement communities. They feature Lillian, a retired mathematics professor from North Carolina, who is smart, opinionated, and skeptical of authority. She loves to solve puzzles, even when they involve murder.RUN INTO TROUBLESilver Quill Award from American Authors Association and named Best Pacific West Book by Reader Views. Drake and Melody are teamed up to run a race along the California Coast for a prize of a million dollars—in 1969 when a million is worth something. Neither knows the other is in the race before it starts. They once did undercover work together in England, but this information is supposed to be top secret. The nine other pairs of runners entered in the race are world-classmarathoners, including a winner of the Boston Marathon. If this competition isn’t enough, somebody tries to knock Drake out of the race before it begins. But Drake and Melody also receive threats calculated to keep them from dropping out. What’s going on? The stakes increase when startling events produce fatalities and impact the race, leading them to ask whether the Cold War with the USSR is about to heat up.HONEYMOON FOR THREE--GARY BLANCHARD NO. 2Silver Quill Award from American Authors Association and named Best Mountain West Book by Reader Views. Suspense takes a thrill ride. It is 1964, 10 years after Gary Blanchard’s high school adventures in The Hayloft. He and his love, Penny, are going on the trip of their lives, and, oh yes, they’re getting married along the way. What they don’t know is that they’re being stalked by Alfred, a high school classmate of Penny who has a bellybutton fetish. The suspense crackles amid some of the most scenic spots in the western United States, including Lake Tahoe, Reno, Crater Lake, Seattle, and in Glacier, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton National Parks, as well as the redwood trees and rocky cliffs of the northern California coast.THE HAYLOFT--GARY BLANCHARD NO. 1This 1950s mystery, takes us back to bobby sox, slow dancing, bomb shelters—and murder. Within two weeks after starting his senior year of high school in the 1950s, Gary Blanchard finds himself kicked out of one school and attending another—the school where his cousin, Ralph, mysteriously died six months before. Ralph’s death was labeled an accident, but when Gary talks to people about it, he gets suspicious. Did Ralph fall from the auditorium balcony, or was he pushed? Had he found a diamond necklace, talked about by cousins newly arrived from England, that was supposedly stolen from Dutch royalty by a common ancestor and lost for generations? What about the principal with an abnormal liking for boys? And are Ralph’s ex-girlfriends telling everything they know?HOTLINE TO MURDER, his California mystery, takes place at a listening hotline in beautiful Bonita Beach, California. Tony Schmidt and Shahla Lawton don't know what they're getting into when they sign up as volunteer listeners. But when Shahla's best friend is murdered, it's too late for them to back out. They suspect that one of the hotline's inappropriate callers may be the murderer, and they know more about them than the police do.ACES AND KNAVES is a California mystery for gamblers and baseball card collectors. Karl Patterson deals in baseball cards and may be a compulsive gambler, so he's surprised when his father, Richard, CEO of a software company, engages him to check up on the activities of his second in command. It doesn't hurt that Richard assigns his executive assistant, Arrow, an exotic and ambitious young woman, to help Karl, but none of them expects to get involved in murder.PICTURELANDThe second Matthew and Mason adventure finds the boys going into a picture in their family room with the help of Amy, a girl in the picture. The dystopian world they find there with everyone's movements tracked, leads the three to attempt to bring personal freedom to the inhabitants at great risk to themselves.DANCING WITH BULLSIn Alan's first children's book, Matthew and Mason are on vacation on the Greek island of Crete when they are whisked back in time 4,000 to the Minoan civilization at Knossos Palace. Captured, they escape death by becoming bull dancers on a team with other slaves. Beautifully illustrated by Janelle Carbajal.FREEDOM'S LIGHT contains quotations from 38 of history's champions of freedom, from Aristotle to Zlata Filipovic, from George Washington to Martin Luther King, Jr. Included are Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Anne Frank and many more.Alan splits his time between writing and walking, another passion. His inspirational book,WALKING THE WORLD: MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES, has information and adventure in equal parts. It has been named one of the Top 10 Walking Memoirs and Tales of Long Walks by the walking website, Walking.About.Com.Alan lives with his wife, Bonny, on a hill in Southern California.

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FOOL ME TWICE

A Carol Golden Novel

by

Alan Cook

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

Alan Cook on Smashwords

Copyright © 2017 by Alan L. Cook

Cover by Janelle Carbajal

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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BOOKS BY ALAN COOK

Carol Golden Novels:

Fool Me Twice

Good to the Last Death

Hit that Blot

Dangerous Wind

Relatively Dead

Forget to Remember

Matthew and Mason Adventures:

Pictureland

Dancing with Bulls

California Mysteries:

Run into Trouble

Hotline to Murder

Aces and Knaves

Gary Blanchard Mysteries:

Honeymoon for Three

The Hayloft: a 1950s mystery

Lillian Morgan Mysteries:

Catch a Falling Knife

Thirteen Diamonds

Other Fiction:

Walking to Denver

Nonfiction:

Walking the World: Memories and Adventures

History:

Freedom’s Light: Quotations from History’s Champions of Freedom

Poetry:

The Saga of Bill the Hermit

DEDICATION

To Bonny who saved me from the morass.

CHAPTER 1

Spring has sprung, the dung is flung.

Peter kept walking along the concrete beach walk in Manhattan Beach. He didn’t turn his head to acknowledge the man who had spoken and was now keeping pace with him. He knew the man only as Ted. Ted was an ugly man with an acne problem and bad breath. He was also the creator of bad rhymes, and he had been the source of extra income for Peter ever since his retirement. Peter waited for Ted to speak again with his East Coast accent, possibly Brooklyn.

I gotta job for you. It should be an easy job for one of your prestigious accomplishments."

These jobs were always the same—verifying several pages of figures and calculations for a business transaction that involved the manufacture of an unnamed product. Peter didn’t want to know the name of the product. He suspected Ted’s business was outside the legal framework he had operated within during his entire business career.

The work itself was easy. It was essentially an accounting job. Peter had been a financial manager and business professor, and he was overqualified for this sort of thing, but Ted had been using him for years, and seemed to trust him.

The MO was always the same too. Ted would accost Peter while he was taking his morning walk on the beach. When no walkers or runners were coming in their direction along the path who might be looking at them, Ted would slip a manila envelope to Peter. Exactly three mornings later Peter would carry the envelope with him on his walk, containing any comments he might have about the transactions in question. Ted would find him, and when the coast was clear Peter would pass the envelope to him.

In return, Ted would pass another envelope to Peter. When he was safely back in his apartment Peter would open the envelope. There would be cash inside, consisting of bills worth much more than was justified for the work he had done. Peter would use this cash for his daily expenses. Often it would last until the next time he met with Ted.

Ted didn’t trust any other method of operation. He wouldn’t call Peter on the phone, and Peter didn’t have a number for him. Ted wouldn’t use email or any electronic device. He said that when you put information in digital format and send it out into the ether, who knew where it would end up. Judging from the amount of hacking going on, Ted had a point.

Peter always felt a bit slimy when he was dealing with Ted. For several months he had intended to tell Ted he didn’t want to do jobs for him anymore. Peter was very comfortably well off, and didn’t need the extra income. He should tell Ted today. It was just very difficult to do so during their meetings, which were short and public. How would Ted react? Peter had no idea.

Ted handed him the manila envelope. He couldn’t very well hand it back. All right, he would do this job, but it would be the last one. Next time they met he would have his goodbye speech prepared. Peter glanced in Ted’s direction to say something to him, but Ted had disappeared.

***

Peter carried the basket with his bananas and eggs and a few other items toward the front of the Trader Joe’s market and then stopped abruptly, almost getting clobbered by the cart of the impatient woman behind him. She gave him a look and steered around him. He was sure he had forgotten something. What was it? Damn his short-term memory. Was he getting dementia? Finally he remembered. Blueberries.

He went over and collected a container, and decided to go to the line manned (woman-ed?) by the prettiest checker. He wasn’t in any hurry, so he didn’t care about going through the shortest line. When you’re a senior citizen (God how he hated that phrase) and a widower and retired, you don’t have a lot of responsibilities to take up your time.

He looked down the row of checkout stands until his eyes rested on a young redhead working at the stand nearest the exit door. She fit his description. He walked past the other checkout stands and was surprised to see that hers had only one customer ahead of him, and she was almost finished checking the lady out.

She finished in a minute, deftly took the items out of Peter’s basket while giving him a quick smile and asking him how his day was going. He noticed that her face was dotted with freckles.

Can’t complain. Well, I can, but nobody would listen.

Arrrgh. He needed to get some new material. That’s what happened when you spent too much time alone.

She gave him another smile. Eleven dollars and eight cents, my friend.

The checkers were taught to be sociable, but Peter was sure the my friend was her own unique personality. Their fingers touched briefly as he handed her a ten, a one, and the eight cents, having already calculated the total in his head. She took his cloth bag out of the basket. He carried his own bag because it was stronger than paper and he was walking. It was also supposed to help the environment.

Thank you for bringing your own bag.

She gave him a third smile. A modern record. He would always bring his own bag in the future.

She pulled something out of it. Here’s your receipt from your last trip here.

They had a chuckle together. When she asked if he wanted it he shook his head and she tossed it toward a trash receptacle. It fell on the floor, but she had already turned away. She gave him the current receipt, which he promptly dropped into the bag.

You’ll probably find it the next time I come here.

She smiled one more time and said, Have a nice rest of your afternoon.

Same to you.

Peter walked out of the store, his feet not quite touching the ground. This was the highlight of his day. It suddenly occurred to him what that said about his life. His elation evaporated and he trudged toward his apartment.

CHAPTER 2

The closing credits of Blue Bloods flashed on Peter’s television set, and then another screen appeared, alerting him that the next episode would start in a constantly declining number of seconds if he didn’t do something to prevent it. He clicked off Netflix and then clicked off the television set. Click-click-click. This was the modern world, a series of clicks. And, oh yes, touches. And swipes. Everything was swipes and touches and clicks.

Swipes and touches and clicks; you’ll always get your fix.

Peter liked his little poem so much he repeated it out loud. Then he danced around the living room, as gracefully as his stiff joints would let him, repeating it several more times. It was worth saving. He went to the small desk in the corner of the room and pulled a spiral notebook out of the top, left-hand drawer. Opening it to a blank page, he picked up a pen and wrote down the poem before he forgot it. Other pages also contained poems he had written.

He returned the notebook to the drawer and closed it. All the way. He always closed drawers and cupboards all the way, because he had a propensity for banging into things. Remembered bruises on his legs and head attested to that.

It was time for bed. He couldn’t stay up late anymore. He had no reason to stay up late. For the second time today his mood took a downward lurch. He walked slowly into the bathroom of his one-bedroom apartment and pulled an eighteen-inch length of dental floss out of the dispenser. In his adult life the people who had chewed him out more than anybody else had been dental hygienists. No matter how hard he tried to take care of his teeth, it never seemed to be good enough to satisfy them. He was applying the floss vigorously to his teeth when he heard a knock on his outside door.

Peter’s first thought was that he must be imagining things. His ears were betraying him. It was true his hearing aids allowed him to hear things he couldn’t hear without them, but he was sometimes tricked him into thinking he heard sounds that weren’t there. Part of the problem was his tinnitus, a constant noise in his ears.

He had other reasons for his disbelief that someone might be at his door. His apartment was located on the second story of a building one block from the beach in the city of Manhattan Beach, California, reached only by an outside stairway. The short block he lived on was not well lit. His son, David, who lived on the floor below, was off on a business trip to who knew where.

David was always going on trips. That was something to be grateful for, because when he was on a trip he wasn’t spying on Peter. Calling Peter on his apartment phone at odd hours from his cellphone and asking him what he was doing. David seemed to forget about Peter when he was out of town. However, heaven forbid that he should ever walk up those stairs. No, if someone was knocking it wasn’t his son.

Peter had no friends close enough that they would be knocking on his door at ten o’clock at night. They would call. Or text. Except that Peter rarely turned on the cellphone David required him to have, and so he rarely received text messages until at least a week after they were sent. People complained about his cellphone habits.

The knock on the door occurred again, louder. There was no mistaking it. Peter couldn’t blame his ears or the icky noise of the floss between his teeth. He dropped the floss into a wastebasket and walked back into the living room. He was glad he still had his pants on. He went to the door.

Who is it?

Someone spoke from the other side of the door, but he couldn’t hear the voice very well. He thought the person said, It’s Amy. He didn’t know anybody named Amy.

Peter hesitated. Although it was a woman’s voice, somebody might be with her. If he ignored her she would have to go away.

Amy from Trader Joe’s.

Trader Joe’s? He didn’t know the names of any of the personnel at Trader Joe’s. Could it be the redheaded checker from yesterday? That was wishful thinking in the extreme—the plot of a nighttime fantasy. He didn’t recognize her voice. However, the door altered it. Then he had a what-the-hell moment and opened the door.

Her red hair told him instantly that she was the same girl. But what was she doing here?

Hi. She gave him the same smile she’d given him at the store. May I come in?

Peter glanced behind her and didn’t see any large man lurking on the small landing at the top of the stairs. Judging from the tightness of her stretch pants she wasn’t carrying a gun. He doubted that anything much larger than a pimple could be hidden under them. She had a dog-eared paperback book in her hand, but that wasn’t a weapon.

It occurred to Peter that she might be with one of those offbeat religious sects that send people around to try and save the souls of the wicked. If so, she was wearing the wrong clothes—the female saviors always dressed like women did in the fifties, wearing long, full skirts—and besides, it was too late for him to be saved.

Curiosity finally got the better of him. He opened the door wide enough to let her in. When she was inside he immediately closed it again.

He stood looking at Amy, not knowing what to say. He had been at a loss for words a few times in his life. This was one of them. She was wearing a light jacket against the evening chill. Her hair, red as fire, which she had worn done up in a bun-type style at the store, was loose and fell below her shoulders. Her face full of freckles verified that she was the girl from Trader Joe’s.

Now that she was inside she didn’t look so self-assured. She stuttered a little. I-I’d like to ask your advice about something.

How did you find me?

She showed him the front cover of the book she was carrying. You wrote this, didn’t you?

Recognition flowed into Peter’s brain like a river. Holding on to Your Money, by Peter Griffenham.

I wrote that more than thirty years ago.

I found it at a library book sale. I’ve read the whole thing. It’s really good. And it has cute little poems in it. I write poems too. That made it fun to read.

How did you connect—?

Your picture is on the back.

She flipped the book over. Sure enough, it was him. Or at least it had been once. When his hair had been